


Locked Out

by AcrylicMist



Series: As things Happen-verse [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Fae, Arguments, Demons, Magic, Other, This goes with something else, changlings, cursing, doors, hunger, pesterlogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 23:04:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15739116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcrylicMist/pseuds/AcrylicMist
Summary: karkat gets locked out.Things go downhill from there.(This is an aside for my fic  As Things Happen and will not make sense without it)





	Locked Out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [As Things Happen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15215606) by [AcrylicMist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcrylicMist/pseuds/AcrylicMist). 



> What's that, you said? Even more worldbuilding? WELL GOSH I'M HAPPY TO OBLIGE. 
> 
> Please read up to chapter 8 of As Things Happen before reading this aside!

Karkat made it back to his apartment after a long, grueling day of classes only to have his key break off in the doorknob. The sudden, unexpected snap of the steel in the jammed lock reverberated up his hand unpleasantly and he shook out his fingers to get rid of the sensation. He tried to open the door and pry out the other half of his broken key to no avail. He was locked out of his own apartment. 

Karkat sighed, pissed off and seething as he quickly Pestered his roommate over Pesterchum so he could get let in. Eridan took his sweet time answering, even though Karkat could hear that hipster shit music playing from through the thin wooden door that meant he was home.

carcinoGeneticist (CG)  began Pestering  caligulasAquarium (CA)  at 6:44 pm!

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE HOME ERIDAN COME LET ME IN.  
CG: MY PIECE OF SHIT KEY BROKE AND I’M LOCKED OUT.  
CA: come on kar really? do you really be needin me to let you in?  
CG: JUST COME OPEN THE DOOR! IT’S NOT EVEN FUCKING HARD I JUST CAN’T GET IN FROM THE OUTSIDE WITH THE OTHER HALF OF MY KEY JAMMED IN THE BROKEN LOCK.  
CA: fine, fine i’ll be right there i don’t knoww wwhy you’re freakin the fuck out about this.  
CG: OH MY GOD JUST HURRY UP ITS BEEN A LONG DAY.

caligulasAquarium (CA)  has become an idle Chum!

Karkat tapped his foot as the seconds drug by. He counted in his head to sixty. He gave the latest new roommate in an ever-growing chain the benefit of the doubt before he pounded on the door. “Eridan! Get your ass over here and hurry up!” He had hours of homework after an already shitty day and he just wanted to go to sleep for a few hours before facing the annihilation of his grade. 

At least another five agonizingly slow minutes crept past until he finally heard shuffling from inside of his apartment. “Eridan? Is that you?”

“Are you really locked out?” His roommate answered, sounding delighted. “I thought you were bullshittin me.”

“Why the fuck would I lie?” Karkat demanded, rattling the doorknob loudly. “Now let me in.”

Silence. Utter silence. Eridan did nothing that would have caused noise and he certainly didn’t open the door. Alarm bells began ringing in Karkat’s head. 

“Eridan?” Karkat called out again, a sinking feeling in his gut. “Are you still there?” He didn’t like this- he had an idea of where this was going and it was nowhere good. He should have been expecting something like this to happen sooner or later- rooming with an out of control demon had its risks. 

“I’m still here,” Eridan answered, but his voice had changed. He sounded quieter, self-assured. He didn’t sound like the petulant douchebag he was when he said, “Beg.”

“What?” Karkat demanded, sure he’d heard wrong.

“Beg,” Eridan answered haughtily, rattling the door from the other side. “I want to hear you beg me to let you in first.”

What the fuck?!? Karkat stared at his flimsy door and imagined strangling his roommate to death. The fantasy was enough to calm him down for long enough to regain his higher cognitive skills through the instinctive wave of anger that washed over him. 

Karkat was smart enough to recognize a power trip when he heard it, and he was unwilling to play into the Fae’s cruelty/kindness bullshit today, especially when his roommate had flipped for cruelty, the demon in him that Karkat hadn’t seen for the first week of their new forced closeness up and at the surface. 

It had taken a full six days for Eridan to ruin everything by being an asshole- Karkat should get a fucking medal for putting up with the guy for the six days. “Fuck you,” Karkat sneered at his invisible roommate through the door, pounding harder. “Find someone else to get your rocks off with, but let me in, you obstinate fuck.”

“I don’t hear any begging,” Eridan answered, sing-song, ticking his tongue sadly. “It sounds like you’re not getting in any time soon.”

Utterly enraged, Karkat took aim at the doorjamb with his shoulder, ramming his body forward without warning. As he’d expected, his flimsy door broke under the onslaught and cracked inward as the bolt broke through the thin doorjamb. Karkat nearly spilled onto the floor of his living room. He caught the almost comical look of shock on his roommate’s face as Karkat next lunged for him, his teeth bared in a grimace as he snatched the demon upright by the purple collar of his shirt. 

“Motherfucker,” Karkat spat, angrier then he could ever remember being as he gave Eridan a hard shake, trying not to actually touch him, to not hurt him. “I am your roommate, not a chew toy for you to figure out your demon hang-ups on.” Splintered chunks of his doorjamb crunched under his feet, and technically the demon should have been strong enough to easily free himself from Karkat’s human grip. He’d spent his childhood arm-wrestling enough times with Kanaya and Porrim to know that he was no match for a demon’s strength, but Eridan was shocked and scared enough that it seemed like he’d forgotten the fact. 

The Faeborn went limp in Karkat’s grip, head lolling back with surprise. The dyed stripe in his dark hair he used to hide the streak of Fae-green that grew through his brown hair flopped sadly to the side. “Kar?” Eridan said, his voice wavering. The demon smelled like salt and iron, ash and the hidden places under old trees untouched by the sun. Karkat was supremely unimpressed. He rolled his eyes and abruptly dropped Eridan on his ass. 

“Ow,” the demon complained automatically, still shocked. “Kar, what the fuck?”

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Karkat screeched, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Beg? Did you think that was fucking funny?”

At least his new roommate had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m sorry, Kar,” he said, shrugging. “I just… thought it was a good idea,” he trailed off. The demon did look miserable, and when Karkat calmed down enough to stop seeing red he couldn’t help but notice the dark, smudged bruises that were forming under his eyes, ink spilling under his skin.

“You haven’t left the apartment in a few days, have you?” Karkat asked with a flash of insight. It seemed obvious now that Karkat was faced with the proof. His new roommate had isolated himself and Karkat was the one who was paying the shitty price.

“No,” Eridan answered pathetically. “What’s it to you? I’m still new here and I don’t know anyone. Where would I go?”

Bingo- Karkat really did deserve a gold fucking medal- he’d guessed right. Well shit. How would his dad handle something like this? Did Dad really expect him to deal with this in a reasonable manner? Fuck, he’d already broken down his own goddamn door and nearly choked his roommate out, what else could he possible fuck up?

“Hey,” Karkat said, sliding down beside him, crouching. “It’s okay. I know you’re Daemon kind and I know your Fae- that’s okay. What’s not okay is starving yourself and then lashing out at me because of it. You’ve got to learn how to handle yourself better than this.”

Eridan looked up at him with big, watery eyes. “I’m horrible,” he whispered. “I’m not even fucking human but I don’t know how to be a demon. I barely know what the fuck a Fae even is.” His hands were rubbing at his forehead where the Fae-mark crept down his scalp, forest green and impossible to hide. It was just a faint sliver of color; most of the mark was hidden by his hair and the dye he disguised the rest with. Most Faeborn would do anything for such an unobtrusive mark yet Eridan didn’t know how to count his blessings. 

“Oh, come on,” Karkat scoffed, pulling Eridan up to his feet and over to the sofa. It was time for the Talk. “You’re a Changeling. That’s rare but it’s not unheard of.”

“But you don’t understand,” Eridan said, nearly crying a he fell onto the couch and cured up with his knees under his chin. “My family- they hate me now. They’ve resented me ever since this fucking green started to show up.” Then, soft enough to thaw Karkat’s heart, “they’re the ones that kicked me out and threw me to the streets.”

“Well, I’d go to your mom and ask for some answers,” Karkat said, zero percent of him sounding empathetic even as he sympathized with the guy. “She’s the one who had an affair and fucked a Fae then didn’t tell anyone about it even after you came along.”

“She made a mistake,” Eridan said, resolute with his conviction. “Daemon kind ain’t worth fucking.”

“And yet here you are,” Karkat said, his ears ringing, disgusted. “The result of such a union.”

“I can’t help it,” Edna said, shrugging. “I was fuckin raised human for sixteen years.”

“And then you came of age and the mark appeared,” Karkat guessed, uncharacteristically cold. 

“I was only sixteen,” Eridan protested. “I didn’t know what was happening to me when I woke up. I still don’t know how to handle this on my own.”

“I know,” Karkat answered patiently. “That’s why my dad took you in when he found you, but you’re my responsibility now and I will not stand for this kind of tomfuckery, okay? You don’t need to be cruel to people.”

“I kinda do,” Eridan said, sulky and argumentative.

“No, you don’t,” Karkat argued right back. “Faeborn feed on random acts or cruelty or kindness.”

“I don’t know how to be nice to people,” Eridan grumbled under his breath, cursing. 

Karkat blinked, astounded by the fact that an 18 year old person on God’s green earth sat on his sofa and actually had the fucking gall to tell him that he didn’t know how to be nice to people. Couldn’t Eridan recognize what kindness was, given randomly? Like when Karkat’s dad had heard of some little demon shithead with a green forehead terrorizing a suburban neighborhood and had decided to go rescue the Changeling before the neighborhood watch took things into their own hands? The demon had been sleeping on benches when his Dad had found him. What the actual fuck had Karkat gotten himself into?

“Lies,” Karkat accused, telling him the cold truth. “You do know how to be kind to people; you just think being cruel is easier.”

The demon flinched back, wounded. 

“See?” Karkat said. “It fucking sucks, doesn’t it? I can be cruel too.”

“Dammit, Kar, what do I do?” Eridan asked, pleading. “I can’t think straight right now. I can’t go out in public- I’d get arrested for disorderly conduct, malicious behaviors, or on suspicion of being a rouge demon in minutes and you know what they do to demons in jail.”

Karkat rubbed at his temples, exhaling to ward of the migraine he could feel building in the center of his head. “What is it like?” Karkat asked curiously. “Being hungry?”

Eridan closed his eyes, surprising him by answering honestly. “It feels like I’m empty,” he whispered. “Like I’m hungry but no food can sate me. There’s this craving for something else like an itch in my heart that I can’t scratch. It gets worse, grows stronger, until I feel sick, feel nauseous, sick enough that I lash out at people just to make the pain go away.”

“I’m sorry,” Karkat said, and it was true. But feeling sorry wasn’t enough to sway him. “But you can’t do that here, not to me, not like that. I’m supposed to be your friend, not your emotional punching bag.”

“I know,” Eridan said softy, looking up at him. “Listen, Karkat, I’m sorry. I’ll… I’ll clean up the floor and fix the front door you broke, okay?”

The unexpected offer was enough to make Karkat catch his breath, pleased.

Eridan blinked, his mouth falling open. “Was that…”

“Yep,” Karkat answered, clapping a hand onto his roommate’s back. “Did it feel good? Being nice to someone?”

“Yeah,” Eridan answered, smiling like he wasn’t sure if he should. “Holy shit. Thanks, Kar.”

“Next time, just open the fucking door,” Karkat advised, “We can skip all these unpleasantries.” He paused considering the demon. “What will you do now?”

“I guess I’ll head to a hardware store,” Eridan shrugged, looking sly. “I’ll have to try out this ‘being nice’ thing.”

“You do that,” Karkat advised, and then he drug himself into the kitchen to start on dinner. Hopefully his roommate would be easier to be around when he wasn’t half-starved and looking for a chance to take it out on someone. And hopefully Eridan wouldn’t be so miserable once he wasn’t feeling sick all of the time.

Then maybe, just maybe, Karkat could learn how to be friends with him.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little peek at Eridan's backstory via a younger and angrier Karkat who is fed up with this shit


End file.
